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VIEWPOINT - Most Americans hear "CARB" and picture greasy french fries, sugary sodas, or piles of white bread—foods that clog arteries, balloon waistlines, spike blood sugar, and push millions toward diabetes, obesity, and heart attacks.
But the CARB I'm condemning here is infinitely more destructive. This CARB—the California Air Resources Board—is a bureaucratic juggernaut that's deliberately driving energy prices through the roof, forcing businesses to flee the state in record numbers, eroding middle-class livelihoods, and steering the once-golden Golden State straight towards the rocks of economic ruin. If bad carbs slowly poison your body, this CARB is methodically and purposely strangling California's prosperity, one unelected mandate and one hidden fee at a time.
California's dysfunction is impossible to miss on the surface: bridges crumbling into disrepair, highways pocked with potholes that swallow tires, and the infamous high-speed rail project, an almost 20-billion-dollar fantasy that keeps promising arrival dates while delivering nothing but cost overruns and environmental impact reports.
Yet these visible failures pale beside the invisible regulatory stranglehold that permeates every corner of daily life. Every time a family fills up the family SUV, pays the monthly electric bill, buys groceries hauled hundreds of miles by diesel semi-trucks, or orders anything delivered across state lines, Sacramento's regulatory apparatus has already quietly jacked up the final price. And the undisputed epicenter of this statewide extortion scheme is CARB.
The California Air Resources Board is a powerful, unelected state agency staffed by 16 members (14 with voting power), all appointed by the Governor and the Legislature rather than chosen by voters. It wields sweeping authority to set California's exceptionally strict air quality rules, climate policies, and vehicle emissions standards, without oversight from the elected branches of government.
These appointees are not elected officials. They do not answer to the ballot box. They are not a legislature. Yet they function as unelected economic central planners, which Central Planners in China envy. Imposing broad, top-down mandates that reshape entire markets for fuels, vehicle sales, heavy-duty trucking fleets, oil refineries, and industrial operations across the state, and by extension, ripple into interstate commerce.
Over the past twenty years, CARB has developed one of the most aggressive and punitive climate-regulatory systems worldwide. Its tools include the cap-and-trade program (renamed with Orwellian double-think as "cap-and-invest"), the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) that penalizes traditional fuels while promoting alternatives, mandatory zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales quotas that force automakers to sell increasingly higher percentages of EVs regardless of consumer demand, strict deadlines for electrifying trucking fleets, and an ever-expanding maze of compliance, reporting, and certification rules that grow more burdensome each year.
The agency's main goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85% below 1990 levels and reach full carbon neutrality by 2045—that’s a change so extensive it would significantly transform transportation, energy production, agriculture, manufacturing, and daily mobility within the state.
California's yearly greenhouse gas emissions hover around 360 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent. The global total? More than 57 billion metric tons—and still climbing, propelled by massive new coal-fired power plants in China, rapid industrialization in India, and unabated fossil-fuel growth across the developing world.
California accounts for less than 0.7% of global emissions, a genuine rounding error on the planetary scale. Even if the state somehow eliminated every drop of hydrocarbon use tomorrow and shutting down all refineries, banning all gasoline and diesel vehicles, and forced every home, factory, and farm onto unreliable, expensive renewables, the impact on global atmospheric CO₂ concentrations would be negligible, a tiny blip undetectable amid the flood of emissions from Asia alone.
Yet Sacramento continues to act as if California is the single most crucial front line in the global fight to "save the planet," but for whom or what is another question. This isn't sober, evidence-based environmental policy. It's narcissistic, self-congratulatory, egoistic, ideological kabuki theater, performed at enormous recurring cost to the working families and small businesses who never signed up to participate in this ritual economic suicide.
The outrage lands first and most viscerally at the gas pump, where the economic damage is raw, immediate, and impossible to ignore. As of mid-March 2026, California's statewide average gasoline price has climbed past ~$5.50 and is still risking refinery exits. Governor Greasy Hair reflexively blames "Big Oil greed" or "volatile global markets," but CARB's regulatory fingerprints are smeared across every extra cent.
Here's the ugly, itemized reality of what Californians pay at the pump today:
· Federal Excise Tax: $0.184 per gallon (fixed across all states).
· State Excise Tax: Varies by state (e.g., California is over $0.60/gal as of 2025).
· State Sales Tax: Varies; some states apply a general sales tax, others have specific per-gallon sales tax prepayments.
· Underground Storage Tank Fee: Often around $0.02 per gallon.
· Environmental/Cap-and-Trade Fees: Programs such as California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and Cap-and-Trade, which can add high, variable costs (e.g., $0.40+ in CA).
· Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Trust Fund Tax: $0.001 per gallon.
Together, these layers create the notorious "California premium"—usually $1 to $2 more than the national average. Californians use about 15 billion gallons of gasoline each year. Even with a conservative 25-cent-per-gallon regulatory surcharge, that's $3.7 billion taken from drivers annually. With ongoing refinery closures, supply limits, and CARB's plans to tighten rules, industry experts warn prices could rise to $7–$8 per gallon soon, and possibly $12 or more during a serious energy crisis. Likely scenario: Strait of Hormuz is closed, and global buyers (China, Japan, Europe) fiercely compete for limited supplies.
But the pump is merely the most visible wound. The deeper, structural cancer is the deliberate dismantling of California's once-robust domestic energy infrastructure. The state historically exploited vast onshore and offshore hydrocarbon reserves, consistently ranked among the top U.S. oil producers, and maintained near self-sufficiency while supplying much of the West Coast. High-wage union jobs in Kern County oil fields and coastal refinery complexes supported generations of middle-class families and generated billions in tax revenue for schools, roads, and public services.
CARB's ideological war has systematically unraveled nature’s gift of abundant energy. Drilling permits have been strangled through endless environmental reviews and outright moratoria. Production has steadily declined. As we are now forced to import 60 to 70% of our fossil fuels.
Refineries are closing or converting under unrelenting pressure: Phillips 66's massive Wilmington/Los Angeles complex shut down in late 2025, erasing roughly 139,000 barrels per day of capacity; Valero's Benicia refinery is scheduled to follow in April 2026, taking another ~145,000 bpd offline; Marathon's Martinez facility is already idled, with additional plants teetering on the edge. In just months, more than 17% of the state's total refining capacity has vanished.
This irony is too sweet to digest: the self-anointed global environmental saviors now rely on importing crude oil via ocean-going tankers that burn high-sulfur bunker fuel and emit massive quantities of sulfur oxides, particulates, and NOx—precisely the pollutants CARB's own inventories label as especially harmful.
California is killing high-paying domestic jobs and forgoing strict U.S. environmental standards, for the importation of gas, jet fuel, and diesel, from countries that have no such concerns about the environment or putting plastic straws in the ocean. Dirtier pollution from abroad is okay, but adhering to California's environmental quality standards is somehow not good enough.
This is not genuine leadership or planetary stewardship. It's craven environmental outsourcing that shifts emissions to other countries while hollowing out the state's economy and turning what was once the nation's 4th-largest economy into something resembling a third-world energy basket case.
The assault extends to the auto sector, where CARB's zero-emission vehicle mandates have triggered a bloodbath among manufacturers. Companies bet tens of billions on the supposed "inevitable" transition to electric vehicles, only to watch consumer demand collapse under the weight of high prices, hours-long charging times, range anxiety, inadequate infrastructure, and brutal depreciation (often 75% or more in the first few years).
Stellantis faced over $26 billion in write-downs and net losses in 2025 alone. Ford incurred $19–$21 billion in charges. GM experienced more than $7 billion in losses. Honda projected $15.7 billion in losses. Porsche and other luxury brands have added billions more in charges. Overall, the massive losses amount to tens of billions of dollars lost because Americans simply do not want to buy overpriced, underperforming electric vehicles that feel more like fancy golf carts than reliable family cars.
The human cost mainly hits the working class hard. Wealthy coastal residents in Palo Alto or Silicon Valley can afford shiny Teslas, rooftop solar panels, and convenient home chargers, while many work remotely via Zoom and avoid commutes altogether. But what about the construction worker in the Inland Empire driving 60 miles each way to job sites? The home-health aide making house calls in rural areas? The warehouse worker who has already been priced out of coastal housing and forced into long commutes?
These Californians cannot afford $60,000+ electric work trucks, cannot suddenly shorten distances that Sacramento claims are insignificant, and cannot wait hours to "refuel" during a 12-hour shift. Every extra dollar spent at the pump or on higher electricity bills cuts into food on the table, tightens rent budgets, delays home repairs, and makes life harder for those already struggling. CARB's policies are a textbook example of regressive wealth transfer: luxury environmental virtue for the elite few, economic punishment, and fewer opportunities for everyone else.
Geopolitical realities make this self-inflicted wound even more lethal. Renewed war in the Middle East, such as Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, could cause global crude prices to spike to $100–$200 per barrel overnight. California, which has deliberately gutted its domestic refining capacity and homegrown oil industry, now faces the very real prospect of fuel shortages, government-imposed rationing, and pump prices rising to $8–$10 per gallon, maybe higher. This is a catastrophic error of historic proportions, voluntary economic disembowelment carried out in the name of net zero.
Finally, a trickle of political backlash is coming to light. Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo recently sent a sharply worded letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, warning that proposed updates to CARB’s Cap-and “Invest” program risk devastating California's remaining refining capacity and triggering widespread fuel shortages across the entire Southwest region.
Nevada relies on California refineries and pipelines (notably the CALNEV line) for approximately 88% of its gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel—making any major disruption a direct threat to regional supply chains, interstate commerce, economic stability, and even national security. Even more strikingly, a coalition of more than a dozen moderate California Assembly Democrats, many of whom previously voted to extend cap-and-trade, has publicly urged CARB to pull back, citing fears of accelerated refinery closures, skyrocketing gas prices, and broader economic instability. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, now campaigning for governor, has echoed the call: policy must prioritize "affordability and economic stability" over unchecked ideological ambition.
This cross-aisle awakening underscores how detached CARB's agenda has become from practical reality; even lifelong Democrats are now forced to say "enough." Yet the agency's overreach has escalated into direct constitutional conflict. CARB's Clean Truck Check program (Heavy-Duty Inspection and Maintenance Regulation) demands ongoing emissions testing and compliance for every heavy-duty truck that operates in or merely passes through California, regardless of where the vehicle is registered.
In January 2026, the EPA formally disapproved the rule's application to out-of-state and foreign-registered trucks, ruling that it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by impermissibly burdening interstate and international trade, outsourcing California's air-quality costs to other states, and effectively forcing nationwide trucking companies to adopt California standards just to cross state lines. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated plainly that California cannot impose regulations that would "skyrocket" costs for truckers and businesses across America, as affordable freight transportation keeps food, medicine, and consumer goods moving at reasonable prices for families nationwide.
CARB's response was breathtaking in its arrogance. Agency spokespeople dismissed the federal disapproval as "a whole lot of bluster about bean counting," insisted that "EPA has no authority over this program," and vowed to "continue to enforce the law to ensure that all trucks coming into and operating in California abide by the same rules, even if EPA doesn’t want to give us credit." In plain terms: federal law and constitutional limits be damned; unelected bureaucrats in Sacramento will keep fining, harassing, and extracting compliance costs from out-of-state fleets anyway.
This posture turns California's highways into a de facto blockade and tollbooth on national commerce, imposing higher operational costs, legal uncertainty, and headaches on truckers from Nevada to Texas and beyond—all to satisfy one state's unilateral emissions targets.
The pattern of defiance repeats with CARB's flagship EV mandates. On March 13, 2026, Governor Newsom and the agency doubled down yet again, refusing to roll back the 2030 ban on new gasoline-powered vehicle sales despite President Trump having signed federal legislation last year explicitly declaring California's ZEV mandate illegal, and despite ongoing Department of Justice suits asserting federal preemption over state tailpipe greenhouse-gas and zero-emission rules. But CARB is not backing down and asserts that Federal jurisdiction does not apply to its rule-making authority. This is not mere regulatory persistence; it is open rebellion against the supremacy of federal law and the constitutional framework that binds the states.
California has achieved real emissions reductions—roughly 18% below 1990 levels—but global totals continue rising unabated. Coal smoke from Asia drifts across the Pacific regardless of local mandates. The notion that California's sacrifices can meaningfully "save the planet" or make the state healthier are delusional.
CARB and Sacramento's zealots are not protecting the environment or averting climate catastrophe. They are waging a relentless war on affordable energy, personal mobility, economic opportunity, and the very prosperity that once made California the envy of the world. The fuel desert is not a distant threat; it's already here: in $5+ gasoline that climbs higher every week, shuttered refineries, vanishing domestic supply chains, skyrocketing living costs, and working families crushed beneath the weight of unelected ideological dogma they never voted to impose.
The time has come to abolish this unaccountable bureaucratic tyranny before the collapse becomes irreversible. Californians, especially working people who power the state's economy, deserve far better than arrogant appointees who treat basic arithmetic as optional and worship an unattainable esoteric nirvana. Ordinary citizens are merely expendable collateral damage.
The state must reverse course immediately: restore energy abundance, dismantle the regulatory excesses, prioritize affordability and jobs over performative virtue-signaling, and once again become energy-friendly. Because in the end, energy is life. Without it, prosperity dies, living conditions worsen, and California dies.
(Eliot Cohen has served on the Neighborhood Council for 12 years, served on the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, is on the Board of Homeowners of Encino, and was the president of HOME for over seven years. Eliot retired after a 35-year career on Wall Street. Eliot is a critic of the stinking thinking of the bureaucrats and politicians that run the County, the State, and the City. Eliot and his wife divide their time between L.A. and Baja Norte, Mexico. Eliot is a featured writer for CityWatchLA.com.)
